


Schoolyard Children

by UnidentifiedPie



Category: Gintama, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Angst, Author hates tags, Author regrets nothing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, author regrets everything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 10:18:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12792483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnidentifiedPie/pseuds/UnidentifiedPie
Summary: "You're a wizard. Didn't you read the letter?"(Shouyou tries to invite Gintoki to Hogwarts. Before he can get a word out, Gintoki tries to shoot him. Things don't get much better from there.Or: Hogwarts AU in which the joui four are wizards, Shouyou is the headmaster, and Otose is very done with it all.)





	Schoolyard Children

An owl flies into Shouyou’s office; Shouyou looks up and smiles at the bird.

"Done?" He asks. The owl drops a crushed paper ball on his desk, thrilling low in its throat. "Oh dear. Does that mean we were rejected? This is certainly a new way of doing so."

The owl pushes its head at his hand and turns to the side. Shouyou feels the beginnings of concern knotting in his stomach.

There are many ways to reject a school - including the new and innovative way of crushing the letter and sending it back via owl - but smearing what looks like dried blood on an owl’s wing is almost certainly not one of them. Perhaps they were not rejected after all. 

Shouyou takes the paper ball, straightens it, and finds that its edges are stained with blood.

Just visible beneath a small, bloody handprint is the name Sakata Gintoki.

 

-x-

 

 

Shouyou apparates to the boy and finds himself in an alley. He inhales, and there is the taste of iron in his throat, rot in his lungs. Something old in his memory pulls at him, makes him sick.

There’s a boy sitting on a corpse, head bowed over what looks like a rice ball. Shouyou knows that the kid is nearly eleven, because his name appeared on the Hogwarts list just this year. He _knows_ , but Gintoki is small and thin and looks about nine, grimy clothes hanging off his tiny frame.

Shouyou puts a hand on Gintoki's shoulder and the boy _freezes_ for a split second, like there's ice in his blood - like he's expecting to find a knife to his throat, or a weapon at his back. (And Shouyou _recognises_ this fear. It makes something cold and sick tug at his gut - something like memory, something like regret.)

When Shouyou doesn't move, Gintoki throws himself off the corpse. He whirls around, raising a bulky black gun.

The gunshot cracks across the alley, deafeningly loud, and Shouyou stares at the boy as a bullet bounces off his shield spell. He smiles, part because it’s his default expression, and part because this boy- this boy has _guts_. This is a fighter, and Shouyou thinks, _Oboro will like this child._

Gintoki's eyes go wide, face turning a perfect, terrible white. He fires three more bullets with perfect accuracy, watches them bounce off Shouyou’s shields. Shouyou, in turn, watches as he swallows, eyes hooded with the bone-ugly horror of a person facing death, and drops his gun.

Gintoki pulls a sword from its sheath with trembling, bloody hands.

(The blade is stained with dull blood.)

 

-x-

 

It is not traditional to take students to the school before they are of age. By all rights, Gintoki is supposed to enter Hogwarts with the rest of his cohort, in a few months' time.

Shouyou has never really cared about tradition. He isn’t going to leave the boy here, in this alley full of rotting, bloody corpses. 

He smiles at the boy, tells him, "You're a wizard. Didn't you read the letter?" 

Gintoki just stands and stares. His teeth are gritted so tight that Shouyou thinks that they’ll crack. 

The white owl on Shouyou's shoulder croons, flapping its wings and landing on the boy's thin shoulder; and Gintoki visibly relaxes, lowering his sword. He raises a trembling hand to rub the owl's head, and it leans into Gintoki's touch, eyes shutting in pleasure. It croons quietly, and something in the lines of Gintoki’s face softens.

How interesting. That owl is notorious for its bad temper, but it seems to like Gintoki just fine. 

"Can't read," the boy says, voice rough and hoarse. He sounds like screaming has scraped his throat raw, like he hasn’t spoken in years. "An’ I don't believe in that magic bullshit- is somethin' wrong with yer head?"

Shouyou smiles at Gintoki, reaches out a hand. "Well then," Shouyou says, "Should I show it to you? They say that seeing is believing."

 

-x-

 

Shouyou apparates Gintoki into Hogwarts; the boy still has a white-knuckled grip on his sword, still has a knife in his torn, bloody yukata and a gun tucked by his side. On hindsight, Shouyou probably should have cleaned Gintoki up first - Otose, standing in the office, looks up to greet Shouyou, and starts badly at the sight of the too-thin, bloodstained boy.

She shoves back her chair and stands. “Shouyou,” she says, voice sharp. Gintoki’s grip tightens on Shouyou’s robes, and he’s not sure what face Gintoki is making, but it makes Otose’s mouth snap shut. Her grey eyes cut over them like steel, and Gintoki’s shoulders edge up towards his ears. 

Otose steps towards them and Gintoki steps back. His eyes are wide and round, his shoulders bunched up and defensive. There’s a certain ugly resolution in his eyes, and his left hand is tight around his sword. 

Shouyou presses a hand against Gintoki’s thin back, feeling the ridges of Gintoki’s spine beneath his palm. "Her name is Otose. She'll take care of you. Otose, this is Gintoki."

Gintoki stares at Otose, looking like a feral, cornered animal - wild and scared. Otose sighs.

"Brat," she says. Gintoki flinches like her voice is a gunshot. "I'm an old woman. I'm not going to hurt you."

Gintoki, eleven years old and already knowing how to kill, eleven years old and looking nine, clenches his hand around the hilt of his sword so hard that his shaking fingers go white.

Otose moves towards them, kneeling slowly in front of Gintoki, throat bared and vulnerable. She moves carefully, every move slow, letting Gintoki see exactly what she’s about to do before she does it. 

When she puts a hand on his blood-crusted hair, Gintoki still flinches beneath her touch. He doesn’t move while she sifts gentle fingers through his hair, searching for wounds; he’s gone so still, in fact, that Shouyou isn’t sure that he’s breathing. 

At least Gintoki isn't drawing his sword. One must be grateful for small mercies. 

Then Gintoki winces, and Otose stops.

"What happened here, boy?" She asks. Gintoki shrugs, looks down.

"Got caught in a bomb," he mutters.

Otose stares at him for a long, long moment. Gintoki stares at his bare feet; they’re a mess, covered with dried blood and grime. 

Shouyou watches them both, a smile playing at the edges of his lips. He’s not good enough to raise a child, but Otose _surely_ is. And she’s taken to Gintoki already - she has always had a soft spot for strays. 

“I'm taking him for a bath," Otose informs Shouyou. The look she that levels at him is almost funny - a mixture of resignation and incredulity and exasperation. "And then to the kitchens."

Shouyou smiles and nods serenely. "Of course.”

Time to make his exit, he thinks. He knows how quickly a lost child can get attached to any person who helps them - but he’s far from good enough to raise a child. Better to cut ties here, and put an end to it quick; if Shouyou knows Otose at all (and he likes to think that he does), she’ll have adopted Gintoki by the end of the week. It’s better to leave the two of them to bond.

Unfortunately, Gintoki clearly thinks otherwise, because his fingers are steel traps around Shouyou’s robes. 

Shouyou looks down, but Gintoki refuses to meet his eyes. Otose raises an eyebrow at him.

Shouyou does not to swear in front of children, but he _does_ roll a few choice words around in his mind. Otose clearly expects him to follow, and Gintoki clearly does not plan on letting go either way. 

Perhaps Otose is a poor choice of guardian for Gintoki. They seem to be ganging up on Shouyou already. 

“I’ll come with you,” Shouyou declares, and Gintoki’s shoulders relax fractionally. Otose shakes her head, and sweeps out of the room.

 

-x-

 

Shouyou borrows robes from a random Hufflepuff first year, but they’re about three sizes too large for Gintoki and hang off him like drapes. There are fresh bandages on almost every inch of Gintoki’s exposed skin, and he’s swimming in the huge clothes. With his cloud of just-dried, fluffy silver hair and his sleeves folded back over skinny wrists, Gintoki looks about six, clutching a cup of hot soup to his chest and leaning against Shouyou’s chest, warm and small. 

Hm. Shouyou’s clearly underestimated Gintoki - the kid is evidently a brilliant mastermind. By sitting on Shouyou’s lap, he’s ensured that there’s no easy way for Shouyou to make some excuse and escape. And _surely_ no child should be that cute; it must be some sort of ploy.

The worst thing is that it’s working. Shouyou should be cutting ties with Gintoki, but instead, well. Shouyou appears to be getting _attached_. 

Gintoki, resuming his masterful plan to worm his way into Shouyou’s heart, blinks slowly at him with half-lidded eyes.

“So this is yer school?” 

“Yes. Do you like it?”

Gintoki nods, sipping at the soup slowly. He’d tried to gulp everything down at first, but Otose had ordered him to slow down; afraid that he’d make himself sick, Shouyou supposes. She knows the look of a starving child as well as he does. “‘S nice.”

“Will you be my student, then?”

Gintoki shrugs, looking anywhere but at Shouyou’s eyes. “Ain’t got anything better to do.”

Shouyou beams. “I’m honoured,” he says, and Gintoki ducks his head, ears going red. Worms his way just a little further into Shouyou’s heart.

It should not be this easy for Gintoki to do this - how is the boy doing this? Sure, he’s tiny; wouldn’t take up much space in your heart, you’d think. But Shouyou didn’t think that he even _had_ enough heart left for Gintoki to take up residence in. 

“An’ I’ll learn how ta do magic?”

“Of course.”

“Always thought magic weren’t real. Thought I’d gone broken in the head.”

“Wizard children often do accidental magic.” Shouyou cards a gentle hand through Gintoki’s soft hair. “What did you do?”

“Think I set someone on fire?” Gintoki scrunches up his nose. He looks _ridiculously_ cute. Too cute for the awful words coming out of his mouth. “An’ I think I went invisible one time.”

He finishes his soup and frowns at the empty cup. 

“Keep that down for a few minutes,” Otose says, “then I’ll get you some more.”

Gintoki looks up at her with something wide and wondering in his eyes. As if this is the true magic of the place: the presence of warm food when he’s hungry. Otose snorts. “Brat. You can eat all you want here; just let us know if you want something.”

Gintoki nods, playing with the sleeve of his robes and biting his lip. 

Later, after Gintoki’s fifth cup of soup, he’s falling asleep on Shouyou’s lap, and Shouyou’s finally managed to convince him to stay with Otose. “I’m busy. I’ll always make time to see you, but I won’t be able to look after you like I should.”

“I don’t need lookin’ after,” Gintoki mutters, one hand fisted in Shouyou’s sleeve. 

“But I want someone to be there for you,” Shouyou says, and smiles.

Gintoki glances up at him, looking faintly lost, and nods reluctantly. 

He watches Otose lead Gintoki away; Gintoki looks back at him with huge eyes, and Shouyou smiles, motioning at him to go. Gintoki swallows, nods, and stops, turning to face him fully.

“Thanks,” the boy says, voice cracking uncertainly over the word. Shouyou feels something warm and soft in his chest - in his tiny, thoroughly invaded heart - and sees Otose’s lips twitch in a small, approving smile. 

“Come to me if you need anything,” Shouyou says. Gintoki nods, looking unsure.

Otose places her hand gently against the small of Gintoki's back, and Gintoki leans into her touch. 

And Shouyou smiles.

 

-x-

 

Gintoki’s sleeping badly.

Which, Otose thinks, she should have expected. He’s utterly silent, but curled up impossibly tight, gone tense and _shaking_ like earthquake tremors are tearing him apart. 

She reaches out to wake him, hand barely brushing his cheek when his eyes snap open, and he recoils so hard that he falls out of bed; comes up instantly, eyes wide and wild, moonlight glinting off the knife in his hand.

Otose sighs, holding out empty hands.

“It’s me,” she says.

Gintoki’s panting, harsh panicked breaths, and he looks young and _sickened_ and like he has no idea where he is. No idea who _Otose_ is.

And _hell_ , the kid looks so _small_. Tiny and terrified, back against the wall, eyes so huge that their whites are visible.

“Gintoki,” she says. “It’s alright.”

He blinks up at her, and suddenly the feral panic is falling from him and he’s falling to his knees, gulping giant breaths. Otose strides over and kneels by his side, and he stiffens beneath her touch, pulling away.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. He scrubs a bone-thin wrist over his eyes, looking exhausted. “What’d ya want?”

“Nothing,” Otose says. He squints at her, eyes unfocused and confused. “You looked like you were having a nightmare.”

He shrugs. “It ain’t anythin.” But he’s not meeting her eyes.

Otose looks at him - at his still-heaving chest, at his sweaty fringe matted against his pale face, at the way he’s trying and failing to pretend that this means nothing at all. She sighs, and stands. “I’m going to get a midnight snack,” she tells him. “You want something to eat?”

Gintoki nods, eyes wide again, but this time not in fear. Wonder, maybe, so painfully amazed and grateful that there is food here. She offers him her hand, and he takes it, small fingers gripping tight.

The hallway is empty, and dim, and cold. Otose lifts her wand and says, " _Lumos._ "

Gintoki stares at her wand, warm light reflected in his liquid eyes. He looks up at Otose, asks, “I’ll learn that?”

“Yes.”

He grins, suddenly, big and bright. There’s light in his eyes, but it’s not a reflection of anything. “Just ya wait, old lady. One day I’ll be better at magic than ya!”

“How did it come to that, huh?!” 

Gintoki snickers, and Otose can suddenly see the _spirit_ in the kid. A survivor, she thinks, and she can’t help but laugh, too. At the tenacity in him, the way he’s already shaking off the fear, grinning in its face. The way he’s rising from his ruins - pulling himself to unsteady feet, ferocious, unrelenting.

“C’mon, brat,” she says, and Gintoki’s still grinning when he takes her hand. 

 

-x-

 

It’s been two weeks, and Gintoki hasn’t slept through the night even once.

“Take this,” Otose says, pressing a cup of grey liquid into his hands. Gintoki blinks at it.

“What’s it?” He squints at it, eyebrows furrowing. “Looks like somethin’ died in there. Ya trying to poison me, old lady?”

“It’s sleeping draught.” Gintoki looks up at her questioningly. “You haven’t been sleeping.”

“I have too.”

“Not properly.”

“Haah? There’s a proper way to sleep now? Ain’t table manners bad enough?” Otose has been trying to teach him table manners. Gintoki’s spent the better part of their meals advocating for freedom to use his hands. 

“You look like a panda.” The bags beneath his eyes are lighter than they were two weeks ago, but still alarmingly prominent. “You need a good night’s sleep.”

Gintoki frowns at her, looking blank and confused. “What’re you talking bout? I’ve been sleeping real well.” He doesn’t sound like he’s lying, either. 

It means that the broken sleep he’s getting is good, in his opinion - and it probably is, compared to waking up to bombs or gunshots. 

He’s determined to shatter Otose’s heart, isn’t he?

“You haven’t slept through the night since I met you.”

Gintoki tucks his hands behind his head, nonchalant. “I guess.”

“That’s not good sleep, Gintoki.”

“It ain’t bad, though.” Realisation seems to dawn on him. “I’m bothering ya? Making too much noise? Sorry bout that. I can sleep elsewhere.”

Otose sighs. Stupid brat, making her chest hurt. “You’re not bothering me.”

“You’re always awake when I get up. I’m keeping you awake, ain’t I?”

“It’s not a problem, Gintoki.”

Gintoki isn’t looking at her anymore. He looks horribly guilty, and _this is not what Otose meant_ , dammit. “Look. I ain’t trying to cause trouble - ya don’t need to drug me, I’ll sleep somewhere else. You don’t even have to see me; I can disappear pretty quick-”

Otose sighs and kneels in front of him. Her knees crack in protest - she ignores them. Gintoki’s eyes are wide, but his expression is carefully blank when she touches a hand to his face. “I just want you to have a good rest, stupid brat.”

“I am,” he says.

“It’s nice to sleep through the night,” she says. 

“But I don’t need to.”

“You don’t need to keep waking up scared, either.”

“I’m not scared.” He says immediately.

“Brat,” Otose sighs.

Gintoki looks away. He drops the conversation clumsily, and says, overdramatically, “Actually, I’m scared. I don’t like crazy witchy hags who try to make me drink dead-people poisons. And who want me to starve instead of using my hands to eat.”

He keeps on that tangent so determinedly that eventually, Otose exhales and lets it drop.

 

-x-

 

"Why won't he take the sleeping draught?" Otose demands of Shouyou. Shouyou smiles at her.

"Why would you assume that I know?"

Because he's _Shouyou_. Because he is the oldest person Otose knows, even if he looks ridiculously young. Because she'd have to be stupid not to notice the darkness that sometimes creeps into his eyes, and because he seems to understand Gintoki on a visceral level.

Otose folds her arms and narrows her eyes. She is no fool.

"If you look at him like that, he may be afraid that you'll slit his throat in his sleep," Shouyou says, still smiling serenely. And _that doesn't answer her question, dammit_ , except-

-oh.

_Oh._

 

-x-

 

Gintoki wakes up two nights later _shaking_ , and when Otose touches him, he recoils so hard that it looks like it hurts.

But when he recognises her, he wraps a hand in her shirt instead of flinching away.

 _Don’t leave._ It’s in his hunched shoulders, his shaking grip, his wide, wild eyes. _Don’t leave me alone._

And maybe it wasn't _Otose_ he was worried about. Maybe the person he thought would slit his throat... was almost everyone else. 

Automatically, she pulls him close, wrapping her arm around his back. Gintoki freezes for a split second, before abruptly folding into her touch. Like he’s soaking it up - as if he’s any other kid, believing that the adults will shield him from the world. As if he didn’t leave that idea behind a long time ago.

Gintoki balls up his hands in her shirt, skinny arms tight around her. He’s trembling, and Otose rests her chin on his curly hair.

“Can I show you something?” she asks. Gintoki jerks his head in a shaky nod.

She gathers him up, and he’s so tiny and light that it’s _easy_ to lift him in her arms. 

“You don’t have to carry me,” he says, startled from his fear and shifting uneasily. His bony elbow jabs into Otose’s ribs. “Let me down!”

“Shut up, brat, stay still.” 

“Don’t you have arthritis or something? Put me down before your back breaks, stupid old lady.”

That’s a challenge if Otose has ever heard one. “You’re all bones, stupid punk.” She tightens her grip, daring him to fight her. She’s old, but she has always been much stronger than she looks. Tatsugorou had always called her a gorilla. He was wrong, of course, and she’d hit him for saying so.

Her strength had come in handy for that, too.

Gintoki must be more tired than he’s let on, or maybe just more lonely. Either way, he shuts up, turning his face and hiding it in her shirt. 

“Stupid,” he mutters.

Otose hums, taking him up staircases that shift beneath their feet. Over the edges of the railings, darkness pools, so dark that it feels like an endless black sea - like miasma, heavier and thicker than darkness should be. Otose thinks about how, when they had been children, Tatsugorou and Jirochou had pointed at the darkness beneath the stairs, whispering about monsters gathered in that black abyss.

But she is older now, and stronger, and she defies any monster of the dark to threaten her. Tatsugorou and Jirochou had always talked about protecting her, but Otose knows three dozen spells to shatter things to _pieces_. She knows how to mutter a word and rip something apart at the seams; knows how to throw up an unbreakable shield, to spit curses and watch things die. 

And she knows, too - knows _better_ \- how to whisper words of magic and healing, to coax a dead thing to life beneath her hands. Gintoki, his hand in hers, has started to breathe deeper, smile wider; and Otose is good at many things, but of everything that she has ever known or learnt, she has always been the best in fighting for a life. 

Otose has never killed a man. Gintoki has killed more than she has, but he is _hers_ , and she wraps her hand tight around his warm, small fingers. She stares into the darkness, daring it to defy her - daring the nightmares and horrors to come, and shatter beneath her wand.

 _He is mine_ , she thinks, looking into that blackness, at his terrors and fears, at every monster that would haunt this boy. _He is mine, and you shall not have him back._

“If you ever need a place to hide,” Otose tells Gintoki, when they’re standing in yet another hallway, “come here.” Her voice, though soft, carries surprisingly far in the empty, darkened place. 

Gintoki lifts his head from her shoulder, blinking around at the stone walls. “Why?”

“This is where you can find the Room of Requirement.”

“The wha?”

Otose snorts and paces the hallway three times. The door pops into existence in the wall. 

Gintoki stares, eyes huge and round. 

“This place is _weird_ ,” he declares. “What did ya do?”

“Pace up and down three times,” Otose tells him, “and think really hard about what you need.”

She opens the door, blinking hard against the sudden glare of bright light. The room is a padded training room, with training dummies hanging from the ceiling. 

“And what ya needed was _punching bags_?” Gintoki shifts uneasily. “Old lady, what-”

“Let me show you,” Otose tells him. “Trust me.”

She sets him on his feet, and he looks up at her, still kind of drowning in his oversized robes, hair a fluffed-up mess. He’s still so terribly small.

Otose draws her wand, the wood solid and familiar beneath her palm. She calls a curse, voice clear and strong and certain around the word, and brilliant light streaks from her wand, slamming into the training dummy so hard that the dummy is blown to pieces. She flicks her wand again, arcing her hand through the air, her sleeve dark and trailing behind her wrist. Curses and hexes crackle like lightning to smash into the dummies, tearing them apart. She’s showing off, a little, proving to Gintoki that she’s powerful. That she’s strong enough to fight. 

When she turns back, Gintoki is wide-eyed. “Cool,” he breathes. “What was that, old hag? How’d you do that?”

Otose tucks her wand back into her robes. “Practice,” she tells him coolly. She kneels in front of him, looking into his dark eyes. “Do you trust me?”

Gintoki looks blindsided by the question, off-balanced and confused. He frowns, scrunching up his nose. “I guess?” It sounds like a question. “I know ya probably ain’t gonna kill me.”

That’s… less than ideal, but not terrible, Otose supposes. It’s a start. She presses a bottle of sleeping draught into his hands, gives him a look when he starts to protest.

“Just for now,” she tells him. “While you get used to things.”

“But-” Gintoki looks uncertain, and Otose says,

“I'll protect you. It's okay to sleep well at night, brat." No one is going to hurt him in his sleep, not on her watch.

Gintoki stares at her, gaze measuring and even. “Ya promise?”

“Yes.”

He keeps his eyes on her when he nods, hands curling tighter around the bottle. “I’ll haunt ya if I wake up dead,” he says. Otose snorts.

“Give me some credit. Do you know how many years I’ve managed to stay alive?”

“Too many to count,” Gintoki mutters. 

“That’s just because you don’t know how to count,” she returns.

“I can count! I get up to eleven, now!”

“You still use your fingers.”

“Ya can’t count eleven on yer fingers, old hag, what sort of idiot are ya?” 

He slips his hand into hers, automatic, and she smiles, feeling something soft and warm touching her lungs.

 

-x-

 

 

Diagon Alley is alarmingly crowded, and Otose is worried that she’ll lose Gintoki in the crowd. He’s so small that he’d disappear in a second, but at least he probably won’t wander away. He doesn’t like being around too many people, and presses close to her, wrapping one hand tight around hers. His other hand is tight around the hilt of his knife. 

"Gintoki, I don't want you drawing that without good reason," Otose says, giving him a sharp sideways look. Gintoki nods, staring around at the sea of people and gripping Otose's hand tighter.

And yet. Somehow, she managed to speak too soon, because after almost losing his hand to a particularly vicious _Book of Monsters_ and getting buried by a flock of _How to Fly: The Complete Collection_ , Gintoki _wanders away_. 

Otose only took her eyes off him for _one second_. But when she glances to her side to ask him whether he’d like to chose a non-school related book, he’s gone.

Otose does not understand this boy.

She sighs, leaves the stack of books with a bored-looking assistant, and casts a finding spell. She tries not to think about what could happen to Gintoki, small and thin and fresh out of war, lost in a too-large crowd of people. She tries not to think about what he might do to anyone who tries to hurt him.

Otose finds him in the alley by the store, teeth bared in a snarl and knife drawn, bloody wounds on his thin arms and a huge white cat behind him. The cat is missing both ears, blood turning its white fur dark red.

Gintoki is staring down a massive dog, and he's so small that the animal comes up to his waist, that the creature looks twice as thick as his skinny frame. But his eyes are dark and hard and his hand is steady around the hilt of his knife, and when the dog lunges towards him his sword licks out to bisect its nose. 

The dog yelps, eyes crazy-wide and wild, blood pouring from its nose and into its open mouth to stain white teeth red. It growls, and Gintoki snarls low and guttural and angry, eyes blood-red and cold. He looks more feral than the animal, the twist of his lips ugly and cruel and wild.

The dog’s tail tucks between its legs and flees. 

"I was wondering where you'd gone off to," Otose says. Gintoki jumps, twists around lightning-fast, bringing his knife up. When recognises her, his shoulders slump in relief.

The twisted, feral look is gone as soon as it came, and then he’s just a boy with dull eyes and round cheeks, the oversized shirt he’s borrowed falling to his knees. 

"Old lady," he greets, and moves to wipe his knife on his clothes.

"Stop," Otose commands, and he freezes. "Do not wipe blood onto your white shirt, Gintoki, or you will learn the cleaning spell and wash it out yourself."

"But the knife will spoil," he protests, and Otose conjures him a tissue. He scowls as he wipes blood off the blade.

"What were you doing?" Otose asks. "You shouldn't have wandered off."

Gintoki points at the injured cat silently, looking up at Otose with eyes both young and far too old. She sighs. "What happened?"

"He was trying to help a kitten," Gintoki mutters, bending down to stroke the cat's matted fur. He doesn't seem to notice the blood getting on his fingers. "Stupid animal." She’s not sure if he’s talking about the wounded cat or the dog. 

"Where's the kitten?" Otose asks, looking around. Gintoki works his hands beneath the cat's limp body, lifting it into deceptively thin arms. 

"It ran away," he says, gathering the cat up and draping it over his shoulder. It makes for a ridiculous image, a thin small waif of a boy with a giant, injured cat bleeding out in his arms. "Hey, old lady, I can get a cat or a owl or a toad, right?"

"It's 'an' owl, not 'a' owl," Otose corrects. "Why?"

"Can I keep him?" Gintoki asks, stroking down the cat's thick fur absently. He's carefully not meeting Otose's eyes. "He's got no one else."

Otose folds her arms, looking down at him. There’s blood all over his arms, his blood on the cat's fur and the cat's blood on his hands.

"Fine," she says, "but I’m not looking after him."

Gintoki jerks his head in a nod, pulling the cat a little closer.

 

-x-

 

They go back to the bookstore to pay for their books. The bookstore assistant’s eyes go wide and round at the sight of them.

Otose cleans the wounds with a quick spell, buys a roll of bandages and wraps Gintoki's arms with them. The Book of Monsters has scented the blood - it’s snarling, straining towards them. When it growls in the cat's direction, Gintoki snatches up the heaviest thing he can find ( _Heavyweights: A History_ ) and hits The Book of Monsters with it. 

It falls silent. This may be the first time Otose has heard of knocking a book into unconsciousness. 

To commemorate his victory, she brings him to a little streetside cafe for ice cream. Then she discovers that he’s never had ice cream before, and lets him order four giant scoops just because she can. They top it off with half the toppings available, though Otose draws the line at _pixie-dust_ and _newts’ eyes_. 

“What are you going to name him?” Otose asks. Gintoki blinks at her around the ice cream cone the size of his head, and Otose bites back a laugh. His cheeks are stuffed so full that he looks like a chipmunk. 

“Whitey,” he says, finally swallowing it all down. He raises his new wand, eyes on the ice cream. “Uhhh… _Gimmehere, chocolate sauce_!” 

Green light shoots from the wand, hitting the table and singeing the wood. Gintoki blinks at it with wide eyes.

“What are you trying to do, punk?!” Otose asks.

Gintoki scowls, taking another giant bite of ice cream. “Wahned nore shauce.”

“Don’t speak with your mouth full.”

He glares, gulping it down. “Wanted more sauce,” he mutters, eying his wand. He shakes it, like it’s a broken battery. “I thought this was meant ta be magic?!”

“That doesn’t mean you can just make up a spell and hope it gives you food, idiot!”

“Haaah? Then what’s the use of this?”

“There are proper spells!” 

The cat chooses this moment to wake up, cracking open one brown eye.

“Hey, old lady! He’s awake!” Gintoki leans closer to the cat. “Heyy, Whitey, can ya hear me?”

The cat flinches away from him, hissing. Gintoki blinks. “Ah. Are ya hungry? I bet you’re hungry - almost dying’s a lot of work, right?” He grabs a random spoon and scoops a generous chunk of ice cream off the cone, dropping it in front of the cat’s wide eyes. “Here ya go.”

The cat blinks at the ice cream, then blinks at him. Then it looks at Otose, and she’s never seen a cat look as confused as this one does right now.

“The kitten is fine,” she tells it. “It ran away.” She gestures at Gintoki, who’s bitten off the bottom of his ice cream cone and is slurping up the melted ice-cream from there. “Gintoki saved you.” 

The cat looks at Gintoki, with bandages on his arms and chocolate sauce on his face, crunching down the last of the ice cream cone. “Oi, Whitey, ya stupid? Eat up!”

Otose smiles, dropping a hand on Whitey’s back. “Take care of him. Your new master’s a lot of work.”

The cat blinks, then dips its head and begins to lap up the ice cream.

It’s not a bad start, Otose supposes. She looks at the cat with bandages on its head and the boy with bandages on his arms, the both of them white-haired and battle-scarred, and smiles.

It’s not bad at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to Hannah (@love-and-partner) on tumblr, who loved this so much that she made me love it, too. You're the coolest :)
> 
> If you liked it, please drop a comment/kudo!! It means a lot to me, and serves as motivation to keep writing.
> 
> The rest of the characters should show up in the next chapter. 
> 
> God bless!


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